Interaction Design – Society & Technology

The Design Brief is just about ready for submission in preparation for Thursday 16th March. As a result we have agreed on the project idea, taking into account technicalities, resources and equipment, constraints and our overall visualisation for the project outcome. The next step involves typical UX strategies such as user journeys and scenarios.

‘The Faces of Amnesty’ User Journeys

The first user journey involves a ‘user’ of the project walking through The Bearpit interaction with the demonstration. Initially, we have captured the user’s movements towards the demo, their interaction with the demo and follow up movements. We have demonstrated how the user could interact with the demo, however, our hypothesis could change in response to user testing. This is, after all, an iterative process that changes shape and moulds to fit the users needs identified through strategies and data obtained from user-centred design processes.

User journeys are effective in that they demonstrate our overall vision for the project. Throughout the process of designing the initial user journey, questions were raised that had not been previously thought of. Through group discussion, we were able to agree solutions and develop a mutual understanding of the project details, aims and expectations. User journeys are highly effective in maintaining group communication, which is imperative in avoiding confusion or conflict in project vision.

This process helped us to understand potential user behaviour, we worked out how users might interact with the project and expectations of users. For example, if the user is walking through The Bearpit alone (which could mean they are less likely to stop), how should we capture their attention? Should we trust that the cube alone would encourage them to stop and read, or should we focus on ensuring that the statements are at a high level of impact in order to capture their attention? In response to the many questions asked, we agreed that user behaviour and engagement shall be encouraged through use of strong statements (content), impressive visual representation and non-obtrusive yet enthusiastic volunteers.

At a high level, user journeys help us to identify functionality through capturing an understanding of possible functional requirements. Queries regarding details that could impact our project positively/negatively were raised, an example of this translated into the functionality of users sharing their face mosaic onto social media and how we would go about this.

At first, we needed to define whether or not the user would use their own phone to ‘ping’ the face mosaic onto the cube, or a hired iPad. Since Amnesty’s volunteers and fundraisers are abundant in iPad equipment, as well as other sources non-related to Amnesty, we agreed on borrowing/hiring the iPads. This would allow the user to take a selfie on our equipment, which could then be upload to the cube using our variation of software. Using equipment maintained by us would mean that we have more control over the content that gets uploaded to the public cube, as oppose to risking a member of the public uploading a non-related photo for a joke (for example).

This agreement lead to a further question, ‘should the face mosaic download be available through email, which means the user would have to give an email address’. We agreed that asking the users for email addresses might seem obtrusive and off-putting, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid. Therefore, we concluded that the user shall be informed by the volunteer that they can share their selfie to an Amnesty feed and tag themselves in it, using the iPad. This meets our goal of getting the ‘people power unite’ message across socially and also makes the user feel part of something positive and meaningful.

We also began to discuss the technical placement of the projector in relation to projection image manipulation:

User journeys help to identify various taxonomy and interface requirements. Through understanding the flow of tasks that the user will undertake during project interaction, we have agreed that the statements should revolve around a variety of human rights related issues and, most importantly, should evoke emotional impact. It is important that the project communicates a clear message – that we have power in our united stance to fight for our human rights regardless of backgrounds and ethnicities – and should demonstrate how to join the people power movement after interaction with the project occurs. In response to this necessity, we concur that leaflets would be most effective in explaining the project, as well as embracing the positive Amnesty statements and how the user can get involved in the future.

We designed a variety of user journeys highlighting user’s goals, motivations, pain points, overall character and the main tasks achieved in the interaction of our project. We decided to design more than one in order to consider a multitude of outcomes from a variety of characters, ensuring our insights and responses to the user journeys are well prepared and credible.

Personas

Meet Tony, Persona 1:

Meet Angie, Persona 2:

Name: Angie

Age: 42

Gender: Female

Background Bio: Angie has lived in Bristol all her life and has two children of school age. She works a few hours a week in a local shop, so that she can spend as much time as she can with her children.

Angie is disillusioned with politics and feels that she doesn’t have enough time to find out about political issues. She doesn’t donate to charities, as she is sceptical of the way the money is spent. She wouldn’t mind working a few hours a week as a volunteer, but money is too tight to give when she feels it might not be spent on the cause.

“I have enough trouble affording school uniforms – I can’t give away money, but I don’t mind giving a little bit of time to a deserving cause.” – Angie

User journey:-

This Saturday, Angie is walking through the Bearpit with her children while they are on their way to Broadmead to do some shopping. Her youngest sees the cubes in the distance and wants to have a look.

As she gets closer she sees the cubes and notices the title and knows that this is something for Amnesty International.

As her child has made it quite obvious that someone may be interested, a volunteer approaches and explains the project, explaining that it is to raise awareness of how much Amnesty International have already managed to achieve with their people power. He states that the selfie being shown is made up of all the individuals’ faces that Amnesty International have succeeded to protect/save.

Angie, being a sceptic, is waiting for the volunteer to say that to take part, she would have to donate, but instead he just says that the three of them (her and her two children) could take a selfie together to put on the cube (and their twitter feed) and offers her a leaflet.

She agrees to have a selfie taken and accepts the leaflet and the three of them are directed to a gazebo where she can take a selfie with her children.

She takes the selfie and adds her Twitter username to the tweet, so that she will be able to find the image later.

The image is now being displayed as she walks off to start her shopping, wanting to find out more about the work that Amnesty International does.

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